Kindness Walks
April 12 - Kindness Walk Report
On Wednesday, April 12th, students from Hong Kong International School, primary to
high school, participated in a Kindness Walk with their families in partnership with ImpactHK to
distribute food to those experiencing homelessness in Hong Kong. With around 20 student and
parent volunteers attending, the event began at four in the afternoon at the Tak Kok Tsui
ImpactHK community center. To start, ImpactHK’s founder and CEO, Jeff Rotmeyer, gave an
opening speech explaining the walk’s purpose and why it’s important for volunteers to show
compassion and generosity to those that are less fortunate than themselves. During the speech,
the students listened empathetically and expressed tremendous interest in the topic by asking
numerous questions.
During the one-hour walk in Tak Kok Tsui, each student volunteer, some as young as six
years old, carried their own assigned bags filled with essential foods and items, such as bananas,
hard-boiled eggs, crackers, water, and hand sanitizers to pass out during the walk. For the
duration of the event, the group visited parks, garbage stations, and footbridges, lasting over two
hours in total. In the designated areas, volunteers stopped in front of each tent or shelter to
personally pass the food to the homeless, gaining first-hand experience in seeing the harsh
environment the people who live on the streets have to face. In some areas, students even
encountered many other elderly who were not homeless but struggled to eat enough, and the
volunteers couldn’t help but to also offer them some food as well.
Throughout this event, the volunteers actively demonstrated the qualities of compassion
and kindness to those in need and reflected upon themselves in many areas. The kindness walk
concluded with several interviews of the volunteers sharing how they felt about the experience.
In one interview, a student volunteer, 6, spoke about her change in mindset after going on this
walk. She said, “Everyday day at breakfast in the morning, I refuse to eat my eggs because I
think eggs are disgusting, but after today I think I should eat my eggs every morning because
some people don’t even have the money to buy food.” Seeing that other people’s struggles were
much more significant than hers, the student now understands that she shouldn’t waste food
because she is already fortunate to be able to eat. Another student, 10, also expressed that she
learned a lot through this experience and that it taught her some important lessons, saying, ” I
learned to not take everything for granted because a little thing like a cup of water can mean a lot
to other people.” But not only did these two students express that the walk had greatly impacted
them, the majority of the volunteers did as well. Additionally, through interviews with the
parents, many also mentioned that they were really grateful this event had taught their child to
treat others with kindness, and help those in need. Specifically, one said, “I am really grateful for
ImpactHK and the kindness walk because it is an opportunity for the kids to see how poor people
in Hong Kong live, and I think in our own will we actually forget that there are people next to us
who don’t have somewhere to live or enough to food, and it’s not something we can understand
unless we actually see it.”
ImpactHK is Hong Kong’s leading homeless service non-profit organization, and their
statistics show that even though Hong Kong has the highest housing prices in the world, the
amount of money the homeless people receive from the government as low-income citizens is
still too little for them to live in a home. Currently, the monthly rent allowance from the social
welfare department is 2515 dollars per person, and the cost of a “cage home” is 2500 dollars,
leaving those people with as little as 15 dollars to spend on food, toiletries, and other essential
needs. This increasingly leads to many people continuing to live on the streets, driving more
people than ever to live without a home.
Homelessness is a severe problem in Hong Kong and affects numerous people daily, thus,
we hope that this event serves as a reminder of why we need to be kind to everyone around us
and help our community as someone who is a part of it. From the Kindness Walk, primary
students as young as six learned that they needed to show empathy towards the less fortunate and
use their strengths to help others in our community. Through this event, we were not only able to
provid food to the people experiencing homelessness but, most importantly, raise awareness
among others and our future generations. In conclusion, the Kindness Walk event was a great
success, and we hope it will inspire others to take action and positively impact the community
around them.